india: Nainital - The City on the Lake in the Himalayan Foothills

Warning: long and boring, but an attempt at writing a longer entry for my family to read...

So my friends Jilly, Shane and I headed up to Nainital in the state of Uttarakhand which is bordering Nepal. The elevation was just under 2,000 meters and we expect some cold so I brought a bunch of warm and dry clothes, which came in very handy. We left friday afternoon out of Delhi on the Kathgodam Express train which took about 6 hours. We spent the night in Kathgodam because no bus was going until the morning, and a taxi offered to take us for 900 rupees (the bus is 34 Rupees one way). We talked with the taxi driver a bit and he took us to a local hotel that charged 500 for the night, for the 3 of us, so that was mostly a good deal. we took the bus which did not have very many people on it and climbed up the windy road of 36 kilometers, which took a bit over an hour, including a chai break half way through. The scenery became very green and luscious, which was an incredibly nice change from the intensely polluted delhi scene, not to mention the air becoming clear and clean.

The Lake in Nainital is from a volcanic crater and was a very spiritual and secret sancturary of Hindu's long ago, which had some interesting stories about its origin (check out Nainital Lake on Wikipedia). It was awesome to see such a nice body of water, with low crowds (it is off season, apparently just as busy as Delhi during the summer months when the locals need a vaca from the heat, that I will soon come to know). We met up with our friend Noah, who had originally told us about this getaway spot and was also there at that time visiting. We had some chai and watched some of the cricket match that was going on at the time. It was interesting to see that surrounding the cricket pitch was the lake, a Hindu temple, a Gurdwara (a Sikh Temple), a Mosque and a Church.

We meet these 3 Indian guys in our hotel who came up on a little vacation on their own and we decided to hang with them a bit. They were very generous and treated us to dinner, lunch and visit to the Hindu temple and a Zoo. The generosity of the Indians is completely overwhelming at times, and you just want to say no or actually pay for a meal, but they are so kind and nice to us, its hard not to feel bad. We had some good times. I was able to wonder off on my own into the one of the village streets and I came across a game of chess starting to commence and I quickly sat down to watch. I have only learned a little Hindi and I could not all that was being said about the game, or about me - this strange white guy watching. After watching them I knew they were good, real good. I became weary of wanting to play but after their game finished they invited me to play. I quickly lost, but the others watching helped me to lose slowly against my opponent. They must do nothing but play chess all day because they were very, very good indeed.

We really wanting to get some hiking in on the second day but a storm came in the early afternoon. First it started raining, and then the rain turned into SNOW! we had a small snow storm for about 2 hours. The snow was very big and heavy, almost like hail, but soft like snow. There were even a few streaks of lightning and clashes of thunder. It was all very exciting, and I was glad to have been wearing my warm/wet gear. My friends did not have such nice things and became very wet so we went back to the hotel. In no time at all the storm passed and there was nothing in the sky except bright blue. I still wanted to hike so we took what time we had to ride up the cable car they had there which took you up near "China" peak. There were some nice patches of snow up there, along with more people living in small huts, it was very cool. we decided to walk the trail down and at that time also the sun began to set behind the hills. It was about a 2-3 kilometer walk and it was very peaceful and a nice way to end our trip.

To our dismay we had to wake up at 6am to pack and be at the hotel lobby by 630am to catch a auto down to the bus stop to catch the 7am bus to the train station for the 9am train. the auto didn't leave until 10 minutes to seven and I literally walked out of the car and onto the bus, which had already begun to start moving!! whew. It was awesome to watch the sunrise over the hills through forests on that windy road back down. a handful of people actually vomited out the window because our driver, who was a sight to see in his own right ( i wish i got of photo of this man and his incense ), was hauling ass down the hill. I was strong though and made it and was happy to arrive at our train station with about 30 minutes to spare, which was enough time to grab some food, chai and get to our seats.

The train ride home seemed to take forever, but it was my first daytime train ride and I took in all the sights, sounds and smells throughout the day. We wandered through some forests as we left the hills of Uttarakhand and into the flatter lands of Uttar Pradesh, in which we rode passed hundreds of kilometers of what appeared to be sugar cane. Thousands, possibly millions, of sugar cane plants is all we saw between the village huts and train stations we passed. sooo much sugar.

Altogether I enjoyed the trip. I think I was expecting something a little more rough and daring than the quite town, but I came to enjoy it and took it in while I could. Now back in Delhi, the air is thick and smokey, home sweet home. I think next week most of the gang will be heading into Rajasthan to check out Jaipur.

Some photos: